Whether this summer or next, Lakers believe they will build a contender

Share this:

Lakers president of basketball operations Magic Johnson and GM Rob Pelinka speak following the team’s exit interviews on Friday in El Segundo. ‘We feel really good about where we are,’ Johnson said. ‘I feel really good about the direction of this franchise. And last but not least, I feel really good about Rob and I, getting somebody in a room and talking to them about coming and playing for the Lakers.’ (Photo courtesy of Ty Nowell, Lakers.com)

EL SEGUNDO — These days, Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka are a bit more coy about their plans to rebuild the Lakers – funny the effect half a million dollars in tampering fines can have – but the team’s top executives remain no less certain of their ability to land superstars who can lead the Lakers back to the top of the NBA.

“We are going to find success one way or another,” Pelinka said Friday. “It is not going to be contingent on any specific decision of another player.”

The Lakers have long been expected to chase the top two free agents in this summer’s class, LeBron James and Paul George. After clearing salary cap space by trading Larry Nance Jr. and Jordan Clarkson in February, Johnson and Pelinka massaged those expectations, saying their cap flexibility allowed them to add two maximum-level free agents from the classes of 2018 and ’19, and not both necessarily this year.

“We’re not going to give money away just to say we signed somebody,” Johnson said.

What rarely gets talked about is this: What if the Lakers strike out completely this summer, just as their predecessors did every summer from 2013-16.

“Those decisions are going to be controlled by those players, so we are only going to control what we can control,” Pelinka said. “And so if we have to do it some other way, we are going to find a way to do it.”

Might that include trading members of the vaunted young core of Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart?

“We are not going to talk about that,” Johnson replied sharply. “We are not going to talk about that.”

When Johnson first came aboard as the president of basketball operations last February, he said the Lakers would listen to trade offers on every player except Ingram.

“We don’t have to sign anybody this summer because we already said that if we don’t feel that we can get somebody in ’18, then we will turn to ’19,” Johnson said Friday. “So we feel really good about where we are. I feel really good about the direction of this franchise.

“And last but not least, I feel really good about Rob and I, getting somebody in a room and talking to them about coming and playing for the Lakers.”

In a limited free agency market last summer, the Lakers acquired players like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Brook Lopez on high-priced, short-term deals, while focusing on developing their home-grown talent.

They could do that again this summer, while focusing on retaining Julius Randle, a restricted free agent. But that would almost certainly be viewed as a disappointment by everyone in and out of the organization.

The Lakers, however, have a claim to the most appealing situation for free agents.

Pelinka, who likes to speak in parables, said Friday, “Let’s take a trip down memory lane. When we started, we were pretty much a team that was capped out without a pick.”

He referenced a recent news article that said after the moves the new front office made, including dumping Timofey Mozgov, “the Lakers are now in the envious position that every team in the league wants to be in,” with cap flexibility and a dynamic young core.

“Where we started,” Pelinka said, “we didn’t have that.”

Coach Luke Walton was asked what his pitch to free agents would be.

“We’ve got a young core of guys that love to play,” he said. “They love to get out and run, they love to compete, they love to work. So I guess that’s a pretty good pitch right there, but it’s just the truth about the young core that we have.”

Bill Oram covers the Los Angeles Lakers for the Southern California News Group. He covered the Utah Jazz for the Salt Lake Tribune. He is the (usually) bearded guy in the background wearing a University of Montana hat.